REDS
Directed by Warren Beatty
Written by Warren Beatty and Trevor Griffiths
Starring Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Maureen Stapleton
Released in 1981
Directed by Warren Beatty
Written by Warren Beatty and Trevor Griffiths
Starring Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Maureen Stapleton
Released in 1981
The year was 1981. Everyone from Ronald Reagan to the U.S. Communist Party was positively raving about this new Warren Beatty movie called Reds. They said it was an epic. They said that it combined elements of a documentary with a love story. They said that it shined light on a fascinating period in world history.
They were all quite correct.
Reds actually is an epic. At a little more than three hours duration, I suppose it had better be. Beatty co-wrote and directed the film which featured himself in the role of John Reed, a radical American journalist, to date the only American buried in the Kremlin.
Getting beaten by police and thrown in jail in defense of the right to assemble is a fine way to become radicalized and that is precisely what happened with this Harvard graduate as he sought to make a career as a journalist. Meeting up with such famous or infamous writers and publishers as Lincoln Steffens, Max Eastman and Ida Tarbell, Reed earned a national reputation as an outstanding writer for his first-hand coverage of Poncho Villa's Mexican revolution in 1913. He traveled back and forth between New York and Europe during the early years of the first World War, finding himself appalled at how the "war to end all wars" was being fought for profits in the name of democracy. Then, late in 1915, he met a woman named Louise Bryant, a writer and feminist. They moved in together in Greenwich Village, the locale for all aspiring Bohemian artists and activists of the day.
For the most part, this is where we meet Reed and Bryant, the latter character played by Diane Keaton. In this rare and fascinating world, they interact with Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson), Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton), and Eastman (Edward Herrmann), as well as other roustabouts, having themselves a fine old time despite Louise's failed attempts at getting recognized for her own work.
Disheartened by Woodrow Wilson's broken promise to stay out of the war, Reed went to Russia in 1917 to cover the revolution. Accompanied by Bryant, Reed was a witness to the toppling of the Winter Palace and the ascension of the Bolshevik party's revolution. Reed's book, 10 Days That Shook the World, is well-title and among the finest examples of participatory journalism, the kind of stuff that truly frightens most American media types. It takes guts to make history while reporting it, there isn't much in the way of glamour attached to it (unless you think of being locked away in a Finnish prison as glamorous), and the authorities have a nasty habit of refusing exit visas when you would most enjoy having one.
The movie Reds dramatizes all this and more, not that much dramatization was needed. Beatty gets all the broad historical strokes right and the few minor discrepancies don't impact our enjoyment of the film at all. The beach scenes exemplify artistic panache, Beatty and Keaton are thoroughly convincing as lovers, as mutual antagonists and as loyal, committed colleagues. Nicholson's role as O'Neill was so powerful it damn near stole the movie out from under Beatty and Keaton, which is maybe why his playwright character essentially dropped out of the film just when it would have been most glorious to have had his wry cynicism adding some bourgeois bitterness.
That is a clue to the only problem a reasonable person could really have with this otherwise fascinating and beautiful movie. We meet so many interesting characters in this film and we get caught up in wondering about whatever happened to them that we almost wish the movie was twice as long just so we could follow them around awhile. In addition to Nicholson, we wouldn't mind hanging with Jerzy Kosinski in the role of Grigory Zinoviev (who looks one hell of a lot like Trotsky), or with Emma Goldman as she gets deported to the Soviet Union for being a Jewish anarchist, or with Dolph Sweet as Big Bill Haywood of the IWW, or with any of the wonderful old folks who comment on the characters in this epic, such as Will Durant, Henry Miller and George Seldes, three of the most important people of the twentieth century.
The broad details, as I say, are not only exact but mesmerizing. I doubt one need be a student of history to find this story engrossing. You should, however, be prepare to be inspired to become such a student because one of the big things that this movie gets right is--regardless of the pre-existing disposition of the viewer (think of the movie Patton, written by people every bit as conservative as Beatty is progressive and yet the result is satisfying to both sides of the coin)--its fascination with the time, a time when many countries, including the United States, were sending troops to Soviet Russia to defeat their former ally in response to that ally pulling out of the war, as well as in retribution for the revolution; a time when Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and his young protege J Edgar Hoover were launching red scare raids against suspected fellow travelers, ultimately discovering that more than half the members of the U.S Communist Party were undercover federal agents; a time when free love ran through the streets of New York, despite women in this country not yet having the vote; a time when an emotional solidarity and an intellectual rigor united people who did not necessarily see eye to eye on every detail of the promise of the future; and a time before movies this good were ever imagined.
They were all quite correct.
Reds actually is an epic. At a little more than three hours duration, I suppose it had better be. Beatty co-wrote and directed the film which featured himself in the role of John Reed, a radical American journalist, to date the only American buried in the Kremlin.
Getting beaten by police and thrown in jail in defense of the right to assemble is a fine way to become radicalized and that is precisely what happened with this Harvard graduate as he sought to make a career as a journalist. Meeting up with such famous or infamous writers and publishers as Lincoln Steffens, Max Eastman and Ida Tarbell, Reed earned a national reputation as an outstanding writer for his first-hand coverage of Poncho Villa's Mexican revolution in 1913. He traveled back and forth between New York and Europe during the early years of the first World War, finding himself appalled at how the "war to end all wars" was being fought for profits in the name of democracy. Then, late in 1915, he met a woman named Louise Bryant, a writer and feminist. They moved in together in Greenwich Village, the locale for all aspiring Bohemian artists and activists of the day.
For the most part, this is where we meet Reed and Bryant, the latter character played by Diane Keaton. In this rare and fascinating world, they interact with Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson), Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton), and Eastman (Edward Herrmann), as well as other roustabouts, having themselves a fine old time despite Louise's failed attempts at getting recognized for her own work.
Disheartened by Woodrow Wilson's broken promise to stay out of the war, Reed went to Russia in 1917 to cover the revolution. Accompanied by Bryant, Reed was a witness to the toppling of the Winter Palace and the ascension of the Bolshevik party's revolution. Reed's book, 10 Days That Shook the World, is well-title and among the finest examples of participatory journalism, the kind of stuff that truly frightens most American media types. It takes guts to make history while reporting it, there isn't much in the way of glamour attached to it (unless you think of being locked away in a Finnish prison as glamorous), and the authorities have a nasty habit of refusing exit visas when you would most enjoy having one.
The movie Reds dramatizes all this and more, not that much dramatization was needed. Beatty gets all the broad historical strokes right and the few minor discrepancies don't impact our enjoyment of the film at all. The beach scenes exemplify artistic panache, Beatty and Keaton are thoroughly convincing as lovers, as mutual antagonists and as loyal, committed colleagues. Nicholson's role as O'Neill was so powerful it damn near stole the movie out from under Beatty and Keaton, which is maybe why his playwright character essentially dropped out of the film just when it would have been most glorious to have had his wry cynicism adding some bourgeois bitterness.
That is a clue to the only problem a reasonable person could really have with this otherwise fascinating and beautiful movie. We meet so many interesting characters in this film and we get caught up in wondering about whatever happened to them that we almost wish the movie was twice as long just so we could follow them around awhile. In addition to Nicholson, we wouldn't mind hanging with Jerzy Kosinski in the role of Grigory Zinoviev (who looks one hell of a lot like Trotsky), or with Emma Goldman as she gets deported to the Soviet Union for being a Jewish anarchist, or with Dolph Sweet as Big Bill Haywood of the IWW, or with any of the wonderful old folks who comment on the characters in this epic, such as Will Durant, Henry Miller and George Seldes, three of the most important people of the twentieth century.
The broad details, as I say, are not only exact but mesmerizing. I doubt one need be a student of history to find this story engrossing. You should, however, be prepare to be inspired to become such a student because one of the big things that this movie gets right is--regardless of the pre-existing disposition of the viewer (think of the movie Patton, written by people every bit as conservative as Beatty is progressive and yet the result is satisfying to both sides of the coin)--its fascination with the time, a time when many countries, including the United States, were sending troops to Soviet Russia to defeat their former ally in response to that ally pulling out of the war, as well as in retribution for the revolution; a time when Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and his young protege J Edgar Hoover were launching red scare raids against suspected fellow travelers, ultimately discovering that more than half the members of the U.S Communist Party were undercover federal agents; a time when free love ran through the streets of New York, despite women in this country not yet having the vote; a time when an emotional solidarity and an intellectual rigor united people who did not necessarily see eye to eye on every detail of the promise of the future; and a time before movies this good were ever imagined.
